The subject disclosure relates generally to cooking appliances, and more particularly, to microwave ovens, such as Over-the Range (OTR) microwave ovens having a safety door that prevents glass in case of breakage from falling outside.
An Over-the-Range (OTR) microwave oven is a home appliance that is installed on a wall surface, often in an upper space portion of a range installed in the kitchen and is used to cook using microwave radiation in a heating cavity while also exhausting cooking fumes and pollution from the cooktop below (i.e., performing a ventilation function). Because of the exhaust function of an OTR oven, the location is generally around eye level of a person cooking in a kitchen in order to ventilate any gas or fumes generated. While OTR's can be made and function very safely, some problems regarding safety can arise.
For example, OTR ovens are typically like most microwaves in that the door has a window within for viewing an item that is being cooked. The window on the oven is helpful for many reasons, such as viewing food to see if it is done and prevent overcooking. However, for different reasons, the glass window in the door can break, shatter or customer perceive to “explode,” which can be detrimental to health for such an event to occur at eye level and above cooking food. In particular, the door glass pieces can fall out of the door and into the food being cooked on the cooktop, user's eyes, or floor where it can be stepped on by user or a pet. Breaks in the glass can occur for multiple reasons. For example, door glass can be broken from something or someone striking it, a door design defect, or what is sometime referred to as a “spontaneous” breakage which has been sometimes attributed to impurities in the glass. In at least one case of spontaneous breakage, the door glass can fracture as a result of NiS contaminates in the glass. As homes cool at night, the glass may contract at different rates in areas having non-uniformities in composition. When the non-uniformities within the glass composition respond differently to temperature differentials, then glass within the door can unexpectedly shatter due to the created stress concentration.
As a result, incentives are needed for manufacturers to provide safer OTR microwave ovens with the same benefits that users continue to demand. For example, safety glass designs are needed. Therefore, the present disclosure provides apparatus and methods for improving the safety of a microwave oven.